Episode Details

Duke Ellington's legendary 1956 Newport Jazz Festival performance — the concert that revived his career and put him on the cover of Time magazine — was not exactly what the audience heard that night. The story of how that recording was assembled, edited, and enhanced reveals as much about Ellington's genius as any of his compositions: the man understood that the myth mattered as much as the music.

This episode traces Ellington from his privileged Washington childhood through the Cotton Club years, the orchestral suites that elevated jazz to art music, the Newport performance that changed everything, and the creative manipulations behind one of the most famous live albums ever released.

• Ellington's upbringing in Washington's Black middle class and his early bandleading career
• The Cotton Club residency and the radio broadcasts that made him a national figure
• The Newport 1956 performance, Paul Gonsalves's legendary solo, and the crowd's eruption
• How the "live" album was actually assembled and what it reveals about Ellington's perfectionism